San Miguel looks to home market after brewery listing
Reuters
First Posted 11:38:00 05/12/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) San Miguel Corp. president Ramon Ang said the company would focus on the Philippine market after listing 5.0 percent of its flagship domestic brewery, which gained 6.25 percent on its stock market debut Monday.
Shares of San Miguel Brewery closed at P8.50 (20 US cents) against an offer price of P8.00 per share in an IPO that valued the company at around $2.9 billion.
Southeast Asia's biggest food and drinks conglomerate is planning to list its packaging business and conduct a follow-on offer after consolidating its food assets under Pure Foods Corp. in the first quarter of 2009, Ang said.
"We hope to sell at least 20 percent of our packaging group when we go public," Ang said in a rare media conference, adding San Miguel was willing to retain just 51 percent of the food group.
Ang said San Miguel wants to list all its operating companies to make them efficient and transparent.
San Miguel's first quarter-performance was strong, Ang said, adding there was double-digit earnings growth in the quarter over a year ago, when it posted net income of P4.33 billion.
San Miguel remained open to new non-core business ventures domestically, shunning overseas purchases for now, but was waiting for stock prices to stabilize before aggressively going for an acquisition, Ang said.
"We are interested to look at anything that will give San Miguel a good return and that can give the company growth," he said.
"We will be concentrating our energies now in the Philippines because we believe there is opportunity now in this crisis.
"I think it has not yet bottomed. And we believe there is a long way to go and the valuation of most of these companies will still go down tremendously. I think it is not yet the time to go and grab something," Ang said.
Ang also said San Miguel was not in advanced talks on any acquisition, adding there were no interesting power assets for sale after it failed to acquire a 25-year license to operate the national power grid at an auction in December.
Japan's Kirin holds about 20 percent of San Miguel stock.
($1 = P42.60)
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